


Sky Pirates

by krishahyde



Category: Original Work
Genre: Airships, M/M, Original Slash, Pirates, Romance, Steampunk, Victorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-15 18:37:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13619283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krishahyde/pseuds/krishahyde
Summary: Jeremiah Cole is a genius when it comes to the science of flight, but he'd rather design airships than fly them. When infamous pirate Elliott Reed offers him a place on his crew, however, the opportunity to apply his innovations to a vessel he'd otherwise never have access to proves too tempting for Jeremiah to decline. He is soon drawn into sky-high battles and daring rescues, when, frankly, he'd have preferred to stay home with a nice cup of tea.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not rated for now. Will rate for content once there's something to rate for (I don't want to mark as general audiences now, because there will be adult content later, but don't want to mark explicit yet so I don't disappoint anyone).
> 
> ===
> 
> This story will contain explicit M/M sex scenes and is meant for **mature adult** readers who like that sort of thing. 
> 
> Though I do a quick edit on every chapter before posting, this a **first draft** and, consequently, there may be mistakes I have missed, some awkward phrasing, and probably a fair whack of junk science. I'm not opposed at all to being corrected, but please keep it constructive. Thank you!
> 
> First posted [here](https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/132733052-sky-pirates-m-m-steampunk). Chapters are, and will continue to be, short (~1k). Feel free to subscribe and return when it's complete :)

A sheet of paper covers the surface of a table in a dark corner of The Rambling Rose. All but oblivious to the sounds and smells of the public house, Jeremiah uses a ruler to lay down rigging, free-hands the curve of the envelope they are to hold, etches labels and descriptions. Glasses clink together, conversation is a low hum interspersed with the occasional burst of laughter or outrage. The air is a miasma of strong beer, cheap whisky, the cooling pork pie at his elbow.

He presses too firmly, and the sharp point of his pencil breaks. Jeremiah lifts the crisp paper and blows off the graphite dust that, if brushed away with a careless hand, would ruin the drawing. The hum of sound fades, and, only hearing the noise once it's gone, he lifts his eyes.

In contrast with the gas-lit gloom of the Rose, even a smoggy summer evening seems bright, and the outline of the figure in the doorway is sharp and distinct.

A man seated near the door gets up and slinks out of the pub, bending his head in an aborted bow as he goes.

Jeremiah drops his eyes, gropes in his pockets for his knife, starts to peel slivers off the tip of his pencil while the crowded pub gone silent moves to shifting whispers.

… _took down Her Majesty's shipment last week_ … Jeremiah hears, and … _wanted by Scotland Yard_ … and … _hardly ever drops anchor_ … and … _outruns the Royal Sky Force at every turn_ …

Jeremiah lifts his gaze again to scan the room. People stare as the man strides toward the bar with the fluid gait of one unused to solid earth beneath his feet.

Elliott Reed, infamous pirate and smuggler of untariffed goods and illegal contraband, is younger than the wanted posters pasted on lamp posts throughout London depict.

His face is softer in real life, handsome, congenial. There's something similar about the eyes, but they lack the malignancy of the portrait. The man is weathered by sun and wind, but with ten years at most on Jeremiah himself, and likely less, because a man who spends his life in the elements will show his years long before one who sits in dark rooms scratching away with pencil on paper.

The punters at the bar scatter as Reed approaches. The man leans across to speak to the bartender. It is testament to Reed's presence and command of the room that Jeremiah never noticed the woman with him before now.

Abigail Reed is the other half of the outlaw pair, and she leans back on the bar with elbows on the polished wood, one knee drawn up beneath short skirts that show high, buckled boots. She wears her hair poker-straight and cropped short to her chin, and an expression that dares any onlooker to disapprove.

She's far more fearsome than her brother, in real life, though the talk Jeremiah often overhears is always focused on her beauty and on her grace. She does possess those things in quantity, but it is her air of defiance that truly speaks to Jeremiah.

So focused he is on the formidable Abigail, that he doesn't notice _Elliott_ Reed turn and look straight at him, until a nudge causes Abigail to shift her gaze.

Her eyes briefly lock to Jeremiah's, before she looks back at her brother, and with her, so does Jeremiah.

He wants to look away again immediately, but he cannot. There is a strength and a mastery in the pirate's eyes that commands his attention.

The pirate breaks the stare first, as he removes his bowler hat and sweeps it into a bow, and then rises, grinning. Jeremiah takes the opportunity to look down at his hands, finds his pencil and knife gone still and idle. He drops them, starts gathering up his papers as he shifts in his seat, suffering a kind of discomfort wholly inappropriate for the situation.

“Mr Cole? Jeremiah Cole?”

Jeremiah's heart stops cold and he stills, completely. “My apologies, sir. I did not mean to stare. I mean no offence—”

“Nonsense, man,” the pirate says, brushing off the slight as if it's nothing, and rests his hand—brown and weathered—on the back of an empty chair. “Is this seat taken?”

Jeremiah slowly lifts his head, all his words stuck in his throat, a rumpled pile of papers twisted in his hand.

“I mean, are you expecting anyone?” the pirate continues. “I wouldn't wish to intrude…”

Jeremiah blinks slowly. “There's no one,” comes tumbling out of his mouth, and it's true, but he shouldn't have said it, not to this man, this stranger, this notorious criminal— He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly to calm his mind. “I am alone, sir. Please, take the chair. I have no need of it.”

Instead of taking the chair to another table, the pirate sits down, and Jeremiah does what everyone else in the pub does—he stares. There's a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach, and, while he came here to eat, he's now pleased that he has not touched his supper, or he may have been in danger of losing it.

“I hear,” the pirate says. “That is, people say, that you, Mr Cole, are the best engineer to never crew a ship.”

It's true of course, except that there is no trace of the laughter or ridicule in Reed's voice that usually accompanies the statement. Still, it is such a familiar refrain that Jeremiah hangs his head, and attempts to smooth his sheaf of papers in order that they'll fit inside his satchel, ready for a quick withdrawal.

“I mean no offence, Mr Cole.” The pirate stops him, covering Jeremiah's soft, pale hand with his own rough and dark one. “Please.”

A strange tingle spreads over the skin where he is touched, like the static from a comb. Jeremiah lets out an audible gasp and looks around, to see if anyone close has heard the crackle. “These are private,” he snaps, brushing off the touch and tucking his work away.

Reed pulls back his hand. “Of course. My apologies. And I've been very rude in not introducing myself. My name is—”

“I know who you are, Mr Reed.” Jeremiah tucks pencils and rulers away and fumbles with the buckles on his satchel. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“As does yours, Mr Cole. However, I'm willing to believe that not everything they say about you is true. Are you willing to afford me the same courtesy?”

Jeremiah stops. “What do they say?”

“You think you're too good to be anyone's _crew_. That you'll build and sail your own ship—or none at all.” Reed's lip curls into a smirk. “Some say you're afraid to fly. That you're cursed with an obsession for vessels of the air but a crippling fear of heights. And they say other things that matter little to me and so I pay them no mind.

"But what they _all_ say, without argument, is that you are brilliant, a genius when it comes to the science of flight, and I know for a fact that your innovations grace the best and fastest ships of the Royal Sky Force. For all I know the one destined to catch me is still on paper.” Reed reaches out and touches the twisted buckle of Jeremiah's satchel, bulging as it is with plans and designs. “You're a man I wish to know, Mr Cole.”

Jeremiah stares down at Reed's hand. The lines and creases are embedded with coal smut, the kind that never comes out, regardless of how hard one scrubs. He sees it most often near the docks, on large men who make their living shovelling fuel for the fires that drive the great ocean-going ships distances far in excess of those any airship can boast.

Outlaw he may be, but Jeremiah finds it difficult to align the tale the wanted posters tell with this man, who _works_ , and works _hard_. Just like those men at the docks. Surely there are easier ways for an _evil_ man to earn a living?

“The RSF bought patents,” Jeremiah says. “I cannot share with you the specifications. It would be treason. No threats you can make will force me to give them over because I'd be hanged—”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Reed says, and withdraws his hand to wave at the man behind the bar. “I mean you no harm, Mr Cole.”

A girl brings a tray. There's a bottle of good whisky—the kind of stuff Jeremiah has never seen served in the Rose before—and two glasses. Reed doesn't so much as glance at the girl as she places them on the table, only murmurs a quiet “thank you” as she withdraws.

“To our new friendship,” Reed says, as he lifts a glass to his lips.


	2. Chapter 2

Jeremiah reaches for the willowbark extract immediately upon waking. His head feels as if it's been split open with a mallet, and the inside of his mouth tastes so foul that he briefly wonders if he spent time licking the privy floor out back of the Rose the night before.

Piracy must, indeed, be lucrative, because Jeremiah's clouded memories of the evening are filled with a constant flow of the very best whisky, along with much flattery and various enticements—some more intentional, he'll wager, than others. He's aware that Reed had set out to get him drunk, to get him talking, but at the time, the attention and the liquor made him somehow ignorant of it.

He didn't finish his supper last night. Didn't even start it, if he remembers correctly, and that's not unusual. It's not usual for Jeremiah to drink so much in such a short space of time, either, so the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach isn't helped by the nausea.

After cramming a handful of twigs into the range and coaxing it to burn enough to support the addition of coal, he puts the kettle on to boil, and ventures out into the street in search of breakfast.

A steam-carriage rumbles by as soon as he walks out his front door. He cringes away from the noise and smoke and wishes for the return of horses, despite the mess. The glare of daylight through smog hurts his eyes and makes them run.

There is a stall on his street constructed of a small steam-engine on the back of a cart. It belches thick black smoke into the air as steam builds up and releases with a _whoosh_ , forcing a paddle around a great vat of porridge, while the stack above drips filthy droplets of condensate into the mess, turning it an ugly grey.

Jeremiah couldn't stomach anything so wholesome as _that_ this morning. Instead, he parts with a few coins in exchange for an egg and a bit of greasy sausage fried over the coals on the vendors shovel, served up on a crust of bread he can take away with him.

As he turns away, black grease dripping down his sleeve, there is a tug on the hem of his coat.

“You're Mr Cole, aren't you?” It's a dirty, skinny child, a folded bit of paper clutched in his fist. “Knew who you was, I told the gent, I know him, he's a funny one, that one.” The boy holds out his palm, and Jeremiah digs in his pockets for his last halfpenny, and exchanges it for the message, which sweats and goes soft in his hand as he makes his way back to his own door.

He drops the message upon the table scattered with dirty teacups, drawing implements, and the innards of roughly four and a half pocket watches. He pushes aside enough ephemera to make room for his elbows, and he eats the breakfast designed to soak away the poison eating away at the inside of his stomach while waiting for the water to boil.

His eyes keep straying to the sealed fold of paper. A discomforting warmth colours his cheeks and dampens his brow when he thinks about its sender and considers the contents. He's got a very good idea of what the message might be, and there is method to his delay.

It's not until the tea is poured and steaming in front of him, a film of grease floating on the surface, that Jeremiah finally breaks the wax and unfolds the missive.

_My dear Mr Cole,_ it reads. _Though I want very much to call you Jeremiah, after the pleasant hours spent in your company, but perhaps that is too familiar, and so, Mr Cole it is. I do hope that you will take us up on our invitation, and come and see the Elizabeth, as you seemed so enthusiastic during our conversation._

_You'll find her in Berth #59e. We are due to launch at 10am sharp, and for reasons I'm sure you'll understand, will not return to this same mooring at any time after._

_We both, but I, especially, genuinely look forward to meeting with you again, dear Jeremiah._

_ER_

Jeremiah glances at the clock ticking on the mantel. There's barely time for him to make a decision, get to Hyde Park, and still examine the vessel reported to be the fastest in the British skies.

He believes that it is, not because Reed himself claimed it, but more convincingly, the fact that the pirate still walks free, and is not locked in prison awaiting transportation proves it.

If Jeremiah lingered too long over his cup of tea, it would be too late. The Elizabeth would take to the skies, and he'd likely never come across them again. The evening spent in the company of the infamous Pirate Reed would be a strange event, but an event never to be repeated. Jeremiah could return to his quiet, solitary existence, where the most exciting thing to happen was the sale of a patent or a commission from the military or a breakthrough with his watches.

The previous evening, Jeremiah had had little choice in his companion. Reed accosted him, and at first Jeremiah stayed only out of fear. The man might be dangerous, despite his assurances. But once Reed began speaking of his ship, Jeremiah became curious. What combination of vessel and engine and buoyancy could possibly outrun one of his own design?

Simply being seen with Reed could be dangerous, too. He might never sell a patent again, not to the government or the military. If he became involved with Reed he risked transportation for piracy and smuggling, but even worse, if they believed he'd shared secrets, he could be hanged for treason.

But he's _got_ to see that boat.


	3. Chapter 3

On the South border of Hyde Park, there is a sign that reads _Dirigible Docking Only_. Immediately behind it, the view is almost completely obstructed by airships of all shapes and sizes.

With pride of place, furthest from the carriage way, where the toffs riding on the King's Road can see and admire them, the large, luxury yachts of the well-to-do gently bob on their anchors. In the middle distance, there are cargo vessels and sightseeing boats, a few having signs to point the day-trippers toward their permanent berths.

Taking up the least space at the front, are a menagerie of boats and runabouts, fresh-painted and named in elegant scripts. Jeremiah watches as a dinghy lifts anchor, and the single occupant, a young man dressed in a fine linen suit and boater hat, scrambles up the ladder, clinging there and making no effort to climb into the boat while the vessel rises into the air.

Jeremiah shudders, but calls out before the boat is out of earshot. “Row fifty-nine?”

“Way down the end,” the man yells, pointing far to Jeremiah's left. “With the rental berths.” And then the man looks to the skies and hoots as he swings far out away from his vessel, seemingly with no fear of death.

Jeremiah's greasy breakfast does nothing to quell his nausea. Despite being firmly affixed to the ground with great iron rings, the way the ships bob on their moorings as he passes between them on the tidy grassed paths has him regretting the fact that he left his tea undrunk on the table at home to rush here before ten o'clock.

How can he step aboard at all? Why is he even here? He must have lost his mind—too much time spent alone with his watch-parts and pencils and paper has driven him mad enough to take such a risk.

Still, he continues on his path. Row 59 is _very_ far, and the perfectly trimmed grass paths soon become unkempt. Still trimmed, but trampled such that bare tamped earth is all that is visible in places, except for where the odd sturdy dandelion grows, its long root seeking to break up the hard ground.

He passes row fifty-seven, and a few rows down, he can see the tell-tale drift of smoke that is a coal furnace starting from cold, kindled with sticks before the addition of coal. His chest is tight and his stomach roiling, and not all of it is the hangover.

Sparks fly from the chimney as he approaches, and voices carry between the boats, which get shabbier the further he goes. Peeling paint and frayed rigging seems _de rigueur_ at this end of the docks, which offends the part of Jeremiah who revels in clean, straight pencil lines and perfectly aligned cogs and wheels.

“Jeremiah!”

The call is gleeful, triumphant, and Jeremiah lifts his head. Elliott Reed waves at him from the ground, the bare, parched earth upon which a grey boat is tethered just a few inches above it.

It is this grey boat that owns the chimney from which smoke now billows. Reed turns his head and calls up to the boat. “I told you he'd come.”

Abigail's head briefly appears over the railing. Jeremiah senses more than hears the “harrumph”, and he certainly sees the scowl, and that adds even more to the feeling of apprehension.

“Come see her,” Reed says, as he stalks along the path toward Jeremiah, and it's not until that moment that he realises that he's stopped walking. Reed clasps Jeremiah's upper arms, smiling broadly, seeming genuinely pleased, and Jeremiah cannot understand why. “I am _so_ glad you've come.”

“It appears, sir, that you are the only one who is,” Jeremiah replies, with a concerned glance at the boat.

“Oh, don't mind Abby,” Reed says. “She'll love you and you'll love her all in good time. Now come, come.” Reed turns to his boat, with one hand still on Jeremiah's shoulder, and drags him along. “This,” he says with flourish and pride. “This, is the _Elizabeth_.”

“Oh,” Jeremiah says, with his heart in his throat, because all he sees is a converted fishing boat, worn and weathered and _old_. “How… _nice_ …she is.”

His heart pounds, because he can hear the lie in his own voice, and he doesn't know now he's going to get out of this one. Whether it's staring or putting his foot firmly in his mouth, this is why he hasn't bothered trying to make friends or see his family for a very long time.

Reed laughs. He laughs loud, doubling over, catching his hat before it falls to the ground and holding it pressed to his chest. “You're a terrible liar, of course, but you needn't bother. She _looks_ bloody awful, but that's the trick, you see. Look around, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah does. He turns his head, to examine the other boats in this part of the docks. The rental berths, the young man swinging from the pretty dinghy had said. Many of them are not unlike the _Elizabeth_ at all, with their peeling paint and shabby rigging, converted fishing boats and old Royal Navy vessels and narrowboats. Many of them gone grey from lack of paint and no need to protect the wood from the water any longer. The _Elizabeth_ fades into obscurity among them. “Oh,” he says, seeing the method, the logic and, oddly, the order in it. “How _like all the others_ she is.”

“You are _so_ clever, Mr Cole.” Reed beams, and claps Jeremiah on the back, a companionable touch that lingers in a way that makes Jeremiah uncomfortable only because it is broad daylight and they are in public—whether the boats around them shield them from view or not. “Now let me show you how she differs.”

A rope ladder falls from the side as he speaks, but Reed, agile as a monkey, shimmies up an anchor rope, leaving the ladder for Jeremiah. He's pleased that Reed is already aboard, as what Jeremiah lacks in grace, he makes up for with a generous helping of nausea, and almost loses his greasy breakfast on the way.

But finally, he is aboard, the deck moving beneath his feet, his knuckles white as he grips the side.

Abigail walks past, dragging a bag of coal behind her. “Told you he was afraid to fly,” she mutters. “Waste of our time, if you ask me.”

She's wearing trousers this morning, in contrast to her skirts of the night before. It's not unusual, among women who fly. They are, after all, eminently more practical than skirts when climbing ladders and rigging. The worn brown leather that hugs her legs might seem masculine, but for the corset she wears. It is a finely made garment of similar material, that is practical and utilitarian, while still forming her into a shape that is unmistakably feminine.

“Pay her no mind,” Reed says. “Come. Let me show you the engine room. It is, after all, the thing that makes the _Elizabeth_ so remarkable.” He takes Jeremiah by the hand, like an excited child, and drags him away from the side of the boat and the sight of solid ground.


	4. Chapter 4

The _Elizabeth_ is large enough to boast an actual engine room, rather than a small furnace and steam engine on the deck, and Jeremiah marvels at the size and bulk of the boat itself. “However do you fly it,” he asks, curiosity getting the better of him, “just the two of you?”

“With difficulty,” Reed says, as he ceases dragging Jeremiah across the deck by the hand, because Jeremiah has stopped, staring as he is at the envelope above their heads. “Since we lost our engineer.”

Jeremiah drags his eyes downward, with difficulty. “Engineer?” He wasn't aware there was another in Reed's band, on Reed's crew.

Reed's expression fades from the smile that seems always there, morphs into a discomforting twist. “He found himself in the wrong kind of dock.”

The courts, then. The man was arrested. Jeremiah shifts uncomfortably, as it is a reminder that the mere proximity to Reed and this boat is dangerous. And that perhaps Reed is prepared to sacrifice his crew to save himself, if he still walks free.

“It was not our endeavours that found him there,” Reed quickly says, as though he can see the discomfort on Jeremiah's face, and it's likely he can. “He liked to chase the dragon. If I'd known, I would have put him off myself. But the law did it for me. They knew nothing of his involvement with us, and he didn't turn us in. I don't doubt to save himself from additional charges, but it helps us as well. Now won't you come—” He tugs again at the hand still held firm in his own.

Jeremiah shakes it free. His hand is clammy with the sweat of anxiety. The deck moves beneath his feet, and he takes hold of a rope, tied to a ring embedded in the wood, and running directly upward to the envelope. “You're in need of an engineer,” he says, toneless as the realisation comes that of course there is a reason Reed brought him here, approached him last night. “You wish to recruit me.”

Reed stiffens, his posture straightening, and he seems to get taller. His eyes tighten, and Jeremiah can see, now, something of the man in the wanted poster. “I wish to show you the boat that can outrun your military vessels. I wish to show you what you've been missing.”

“They're not _mine_ ,” Jeremiah says, fearing for his safety, because what if Reed brought him here to do away with him, thinking him the key to the strength of the Sky Force that is, perhaps, his only threat. “Small parts of a whole, that is all. New ways of rigging for efficiency, envelope shapes to hold more gas while increasing aerodynamics.” As he speaks of envelopes, he lifts his eyes again, and as he does, the wind rises, and the envelope moves, the surface of it rippling like cloth.

He staggers back a few steps. “It's nothing but a balloon,” he gasps, shocked, because balloons take a vessel up to drift on the air currents, but speed isn't possible and you certainly cannot steer one _against the wind_. Every single vessel in this dock has a rigid envelope, one built of wood sealed with pitch or steel hammered wafer-thin—except the _Elizabeth_. “How?”

“That's what I wanted to show you,” Reed says, his face and bearing and voice gone soft and gentle once again. “Because I think you're one of the few men alive who might appreciate her.”

“Me,” Jeremiah says, but it's not a question, it couldn't be, and he doesn't question it at all. If _any_ vessel could outrun the RSF, and _especially_ one held aloft by an envelope made of simple fabric, then yes, he wants to know how. But there are dozens of men he could think of—not least of which the RSF themselves—that would want to know how.

“You must see her workings,” Reed says, and he holds out his hand.

Jeremiah doesn't take it. He looks at it, though, but then lifts his eyes to Reed's face. “Show me.”

.

When Reed opens the door to the engine room, Jeremiah prepares himself to see one unlike any other.

He doesn't expect to find it almost empty.

All there is in this room is a small coal furnace. There is no boiler, just a series of pipes and a chamber the like of which is used to harvest coal gas. The whole thing stands in the middle of the otherwise empty structure, with just a few sacks of coal stacked off to the side.

“I don't understand,” Jeremiah says. “Is it just a hot air balloon? Is it all a lie?”

“That the _Elizabeth_ is a steam powered vessel? That would only be a lie if we had ever uttered it. We've not.” Reed closes the door behind them, plunging them into darkness but for the glow around the edges of the fire door in the furnace. “Steam may not steer her, but she is a dirigible vessel all the same.”

There is the sound of heavy sacks dragged over the floor, hinges creak, and then a dim glow lights the room as Reed lifts a trapdoor in the floor.

“Come with me,” Reed says, once more with his hand held aloft for Jeremiah to take. He pulls Jeremiah toward him, and guides him toward the hole, steadies him as Jeremiah steps onto the rungs of the ladder which leads into the gently lit space below.


	5. Chapter 5

Down in the belly of the _Elizabeth_ , Jeremiah feels as though he's stepped through some kind of veil into a world of giants, except he's not Gulliver, and these are not human-shaped giants.

In the dimly lit space, all he can see are the workings of clocks, but at such a size as he's never before seen. He's been in buildings full of machinery before, mills with great water wheels and the workings of bridges with steam-driven cogs of heavy iron, but that is not what is inside the _Elizabeth_.

It's as if he's been miniaturised and has climbed into one of his own watches. Everything is fine and shining and delicate, though some of the parts are taller than he is. It is still, but he can envision it at work, a fine hum instead of the deafening crunch and boom something of this size should be, and he knows it would be quiet because he can see with eyes that understand every inch and angle.

Everything is perfectly calibrated within the tiniest measurement, polished to a mirror sheen, without a single burr or imperfection.

He turns from the spectacle to stare at Reed, and he must look wide-eyed with shock and disbelief, yet, he believes. “How does this exist?”

“My father was like you,” Reed says. “A brilliant man, with thought that was not constrained by what he had been told was impossible. He built this, and was ridiculed for it. But it works. This engine could throw us further and faster than any other vessel in the skies.” Something interrupts the pride on Reed's face as he twists his lips. “Until very recently.”

Now Jeremiah understands why _he_ is the one Reed approached. Fine clockwork like this is left for clocks, ignored as unfeasible for flight. Even Jeremiah's interest in the fine art of clockwork is a merely a trade he may fall back on should he ever be desperate enough.

“You don't know how to improve on it,” he says, because it's obvious. Until recently they didn't need more speed. “What vessel is faster? Because I follow the progress of the military fleet.” Paying attention to recent developments in flight is a necessary part of what he _does_. “I've seen nothing that indicates an increase in speed—”

Reed shakes his head. “It doesn't matter right now. Please.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Examine her. Get to know her and understand her.”

Jeremiah has been itching to do just that, and he has questions—so many questions—but they can wait. He has little time to see how she works, and so he walks through the great engine below decks, seeking to understand _everything_.

It doesn't take him long for the expression Reed used to make perfect sense. The engine would literally throw the vessel through the air at great speeds with the device vaguely reminiscent of an ancient trebuchet, and he so wishes he could see it in action. He's distracted and at first doesn't realise what's happening when the whole boat gives a gentle lurch skyward until Reed speaks.

“Damn it, Abigail,” Reed says.

Jeremiah takes hold of the machine to keep his footing as she moves horizontally.

Reed heads for the ladder. Jeremiah follows close on his heels in a kind of panic.

“I'll not be coerced,” he insists, as he hurries past gigantic cogs and springs and wheels. “If you think kidnap will make me work for you you're quite mistaken—”

Reed stops at the bottom of the ladder and whirls on Jeremiah. “This wasn't my doing, nor my intent. I don't seek to rule my sister, but this goes against my wishes. Be assured, I will see you returned to your home as soon as I can.”

Reed climbs the ladder with the agility of someone who does so several times a day, and Jeremiah follows, with considerably less grace.

.

Above deck, Jeremiah clings to the outside of the empty engine-room, while the Reed siblings gesture emphatically at each other, occasionally throwing either an apologetic, or accusing—depending on the sibling wearing it—look in his direction.

He can't hear anything, as the wind carries their voices away. Eventually, however, Abigail's body language eases, and she slinks away to the controls. Jeremiah watches her as she pulls a lever near the floor—just one amongst many—and a soft vibration begins beneath his feet as the propeller engages.

Jeremiah looks up, watches the envelope ripple as the wind catches it. He's got no idea in which direction they're going, still barely believes that Elliott had no hand in his abduction.

“We must go with the wind,” Reed says as he approaches. “You understand.”

Jeremiah drops his eyes, stares into the man as though possessed of a confidence he hardly feels. “Why abduct me? I don't understand how it can possibly help your situation.”

“It doesn't,” Reed says. “Abigail doesn't think a stranger should even see our father's work, much less be allowed to tinker with it. And she's trying to prove you're afraid to fly so I'll cease my pursuit of you.” Reed glances at the way Jeremiah clings to the edge of the structure he holds. “She believes it proved. Is it true? _Are_ you afraid?”

“I have no idea,” Jeremiah says. “I've never flown.”

The tight expression on Reed's face softens, and he almost smiles. “All your command of aerodynamics and flight engineering, and it's all theory? You never had any desire to put it into practise?”

Jeremiah shakes his head. “None at all.”

“Then come,” Reed says, and takes Jeremiah by the hand once more, not tugging him along in pride and excitement as before, but reassuring, giving Jeremiah something to hold to as the vessel shifts beneath his feet. “See the world from above. It _will_ change your mind, I swear it.”


End file.
